Rest is work in our fast paced lives

"I'll rest when I die."
"I have too much to do to waste my time sleeping."
"I'm so busy - where do people find the time."
"I can't be lazy - I must do something productive with my time."

Does this sound familiar? These thoughts are pervasive in our society among all age groups. We live busy lives, we move faster, we produce more, and we work, work, work. These ideas are so fundamental we often align our productivity with a sense of self worth.

The truth is these ideas are at the root of our sense of someone else's worth. Our sense of self worth is so often calculated from what others think of us based on what we give to them. What about what we are worth to ourselves? What will we give to ourselves? Rest is work we do for ourselves.

We have a certain amount of energy/vital force available for work. We can use this energy for thinking, for muscular activity, or for internal restructuring and neural integration (the function of sleep and rest). When we rest we are building a more sound and stable internal structure to think and move from.

Rest is work in our fast paced lives. It is hard to etch out time to work for yourself (rest). It takes dedication. For those of us who don't like feeling lazy know that as long as we are alive we are working. Who and what are we working for is the real question.

Rest helps us: heal, reduce the stress we feel, keep our mind clear and able to focus, be more productive, be in a better mood. It has a positive effect on: our mind, our immunity, our gut, our skin, our whole body.

Making time for ourselves to be still daily (even just 5 minutes), taking breaks from thoughtful and muscular work a couple times a day (even just 15 minutes each time), getting restful sleep nightly, and taking extended periods of rest at least a couple times a year adds immeasurably to our sense of wellbeing.

Take a little time on for yourself. You'll be amazed how much better you'll feel and how much more you'll have to give when your body receives the benefits of enough rest.

Minor injuries can take a long-term toll

If you experience a minor injury or a physical jolt, you may feel sore for a while. A few weeks later you will probably feel fine. But you now have a "blind spot" in your sensory field; your body has probably limited your motion slightly to prevent further injury.

The good news is that your body can function comfortably in a compromised condition for a long time. But the cumulative effect of minor injuries can make you vulnerable later. In a few years, your compensating systems might become compromised too. If your symptoms are ignored, your body will shift to other systems that carry the load for a while. Your body becomes less flexible however and must rely on less functional systems to compensate. Perhaps a few times a year you experience pain, but it tends to go away, or maybe you just get used to it or you chalk it up to "getting older". Many years later (up to 20 years later), your compensating systems finally lose the ability to carry the load -- now the pain returns and does not go away.

It can take many years for the cumulative effects of blind spots in your sensory field and the locking down of the body parts associated with those sensors, before you might think about getting some help. Your body talks to you along the way though. Uncomfortable symptoms are your body's way of getting your conscious attention to help resolve an internal conflict.

If you pay attention to your body when you feel slight pain, instead of waiting until you are in severe pain, your entire body will benefit by being more flexible and functioning at peak performance. This is a much more pleasing way to live (as long as you live) -- rather than resigning yourself to the ever increasing restriction, pain, and pathology that we tend to "expect" from old age.